“I go to prepare a place for you.”
In the most excellent now,
The journey of 300 trips,
From North to South.
Thousands of nights
And the guided by moons
And Suns,
Our greater mother
And greatest protector
As awoken to see her last
Sunrise.
On this day,
Answering questions,
Giving smiles and self
Her body slows
Eyes heavy.
But she fights.
She waits.
The air in her body heavy and laboring.
The world around her,
Apart from her,
Will ask for her
Need her,
Seeing her as superhero
And angelic.
On the end of this day,
When beans picked,
Visitors and family fill
Spaces, furniture and hours.
Windows are open,
Only to shut again, as
She goes to her room.
Body and soul,
Matching cadence
Of those needing rest.
Step by step,
She lays on the clean bed
Made and kept for her.
The breath that tasted
Possession by force,
Seeing death, chaos around her
Immeasurable grief,
Called to the law of the Lord
For strength and guidance…
That breath slowed.
Her eyes heavy.
The rest is coming.
The rest that is needed.
The rest that is owed to her.
The murmuring of the house
Loud in the ears which are shutting,
As her breath,
The same breath she held to swim
To hide,
To gather strength for the journey
That breath is fading.
In that body,
Cared for, carried by
Breath for 9 years
Less than a century,
Seeing the fall of a institution,
Which thrived, fed on
Blood, life and bone
Of a stolen people.
She saw the
Dividing of a nation,
Still, and now, trying
To find it’s way back
Together.
The breath, this dynamic cadence,
Was giving way.
Her eyes shut,
The Great Chariot wheels
Louder, beckoning for
The Conductor to come.
Yet, she is held by the love in the room.
The ancestral core, shedding, stirring
Ready for the last sojourn, to follow
That same North Star,
In the same endless sky.
She is leaving.
She was, leaving.
And in the leaving,
The comfort is still coming.
The Comforter still in the room,
The rushing mighty wind
Filling the same space,
That held her by love,
Kept her by power and duty.
That same breath tells all those
Waiting for the last blessing
The last words,
The last right to her,
She does what all
Black women do.
She gives herself before she leaves.
“I go to prepare a place for you.”
This place, this place
Giving from mother to daughter
Given from daughter back to mother
To be held by mothers to give to the daughters
To be carried by wind and earth
To remind those whom are to come,
Are here, will come after
That someone will be there
When we got there.
(c) JBHarris, 2019
This piece will be included in For A Black Girl collection, to be published in June 2020.
